A Group-Quitting Journey, with a Stance

Recently, I left a group chat.

It's normally a small thing — I'd already left many groups as part of an information-source declutter.

But this time was different. I left after getting into an argument.

It started simply: someone asked why foreign software tends to be better and foreign games more diverse.

Having recently learned about the economic concept of "voting with your feet," I was eager to show off my knowledge.

So I launched into an explanation. The gist was: Chinese users are generally unwilling to pay for software, which leads to this outcome. I used games as an example — Chinese users tend to prefer free-to-play games and then spend heavily on in-game purchases, so developers lean toward making free-to-play cash-grab games. I made it clear this was only one of many reasons.

Just as I was feeling quite proud of my brilliance, a friend in the group started debating me. My biggest flaw is that the moment someone questions me, I start questioning myself.

I'm actually very open to rational discussion — it's one of the few qualities I'm proud of.

But then he pulled up a game ranking list, claiming Chinese games made up a large portion. Setting aside what kind of ranking it was, and temporarily ignoring the "AD" labels clearly displayed next to each entry — let's just pretend they weren't ads and it was a perfectly authoritative list.

There were indeed many titles I didn't recognize — I have to admit I'm no longer a qualified gamer. But I could still identify most of them as exactly the kind of free-to-play-then-pay games I was talking about.

While my earlier description of "free cash-grab reskin games" was a bit aggressive, some game-developer friends I know were literally doing exactly that. A ranking list doesn't disprove the phenomenon.

After a brief bout of self-doubt, I was convinced the ranking actually proved my point. Even if most entries were ads, I believe the advertising industry also follows the "voting with your feet" principle to some degree.

So I explained again, thinking he might have misunderstood my earlier point.

He didn't seem convinced but wanted to end the discussion. His parting shot was: "If you think what you said above wasn't coming from a stance, then whatever."

Normally, things would have ended there — everyone goes back to their lives.

But I didn't like that last remark. So I left the group.

I don't like when people casually invoke "stance." It's not that I dislike the word itself — it's how too many people use it. You're making a normal point, someone accuses you of "having a stance," and suddenly everything you said gets erased.

It's not just that the vague accusation of "having a stance" is devastatingly dismissive, capable of negating all of someone's effort. It's also because I believe everyone has a stance — that's the very premise of discussion.

Everything you've said, done, and experienced — that's your stance. If you tell me you have no stance, I'd think you're a dust particle in a vacuum, drifting in a purposeless direction forever, never stopping, never changing course.

I believe that you bring your stance and I bring mine — that's the prerequisite for discussion. My stance might shift during the conversation, yours might migrate too, and that's precisely the point of having a discussion.

So don't talk to me about stances. Talk to me about the specific issue.

I usually just lurked in the group, sharing memes and being silly. It was a group I rather liked, full of people I was fond of.

But there had already been many discussions in the group that escalated to abstract heights I couldn't follow and didn't want to. I just want to stay in my small world, discussing small, concrete things.

It also happened to coincide with my recent effort to slow things down and reduce information intake.

So after saying goodbye (I'd been fairly active, after all), I tapped "Leave Group." Then I wrote this blog post~